Juan Pablo Duarte

Juan Pablo Duarte (26 January 1813-15 July 1876) was one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic and a major revolutionary leader during the Dominican War of Independence.

Biography
Juan Pablo Duarte was born in Santo Domingo, Captaincy General of Santo Domingo in 1813, and he came from a middle-class merchant family. When he was eight years old in 1821, the criollo elite attempted to create an independent country, Spanish Haiti, but it was annexed by Haiti two months later. In 1828, Duarte was sent to study abroad in the United States and Europe, and he established a patriotic society back in the former Spanish Haiti in 1838. On 27 February 1844, when the Dominican Republic declared independence from Haiti, Duarte was one of the independence cause's first leaders. Duarte supported a republican, anti-colonial, liberal, and progressive idea of a new republic, and he said that he would only become President if a majority of Dominicans voted for him. In 1845, the general Pedro Santana exiled Duarte to Venezuela, and he died in Caracas in 1876 at the age of 63.